1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention relates generally to enhancing the performance and reducing the cost of wireless communication transceivers.
2. Background Art
Strict on-chip and on-board area limitations are faced in the design of next generation wireless communication devices. These limitations are due to the large number of radio frequency (RF) ports (and associated on-chip and on-board circuitry) needed to support multi-standard/multi-band operation and spatial diversity. These area limitations are made even more severe by the demand for increasingly smaller foam factors and improved performance/power consumption. Specifically, smaller form factors place constraints, primarily, on the board size and the area that can be used for on-board components. Improved performance (e.g., lower noise) and power consumption, on the other hand, increase the demand for semiconductor substrate (chip) area by requiring that higher quality factor (Q) passive devices (which are larger in size) be used in various components (e.g., low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), power amplifier (PA) drivers, etc.).
The present disclosure will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. Generally, the drawing in which an element first appears is typically indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.